Event · M41

Fall of the Piscina keep

The Fall of the Piscina keep was the destruction of a Dark Angels garrison on Piscina IV during a plot by the Fallen to seize guarded gene-seed. Piscina IV is a mining world in the Piscina system, Segmentum Obscurus, and its keep served as a repository for gene-seed (the genetic inheritance used to create new Space Marines) under the care of a small garrison. No precise date for the fall is firmly established in the surviving record. The keep’s garrison was led by Interrogator-Chaplain Boreas, with Techmarine Hephaestus responsible for maintaining its equipment, including an annihilus virus weapon kept beneath the structure as a last-resort defence. Apothecary Nestor served as guardian of the gene-seed itself, and the garrison was completed by Brothers Thumiel and Zaul and by Veteran Sergeant Damas, who trained aspirants drawn from the neighbouring world of Piscina V. Nearby, on Piscina II, Cypher and other Fallen had established a base, from which they laid plans with a band of Chaos Space Marines to draw the garrison away and open the keep, so that the gene-seed held in its Apothecarion vault could be stolen. The Fallen and their allies lured Boreas and part of the garrison from the planet before breaching the keep. In the course of the raid, the keep’s virus weapon failsafe was triggered, threatening to annihilate all life on Piscina IV unless the airtight doors were kept sealed. Boreas recognised that opening the keep to escape would doom the wider population, and held the doors shut. Nestor attempted to leave with the gene-seed regardless, and Boreas killed him with Hephaestus’s own plasma pistol to prevent its loss to the Fallen. Rather than wait for hunger or thirst to force the doors open, the surviving Space Marines clasped melta bombs to themselves and detonated them while praying to Lion El’Jonson, the primarch (one of the Emperor’s gene-forged sons) and founder of the Dark Angels. The entire squad perished within its own keep. The garrison’s silence brought the Ravenwing, the Dark Angels’ mounted search company, under Grand Master Sammael to investigate. What they found was a sealed keep and a dead garrison who had chosen annihilation over surrender of the gene-seed or the lives of the planet’s population. Cypher and two or three other Fallen withdrew from the keep towards the city docks of Piscina IV and disappeared from record thereafter, leaving the raid as one more unresolved episode in the Dark Angels’ enduring pursuit of the Fallen. The raid is among the episodes in which Cypher is recorded as acting in concert with Chaos Space Marines; elsewhere he is recorded as fighting beside Imperial Guardsmen and Space Marines, and his allegiance remains unresolved.

See where Fall of the Piscina keep occurred on the galactic map in the 41st Millennium.

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